At Chesmar Homes, January is a good time for employees to work on their tans.

That's when, if the Houston-based company meets its annual income and customer satisfaction goals, all of Chesmar's 137 employees board a plane for a tropical locale to celebrate. Recent trips have included the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Next year, the company's employees may be bound for Maui's Ritz-Carlton Kapalua.

But Scott Merovitch, Chesmar's Houston division president, said the trip is not just based on the top and bottom lines.

"If we blow out our income goal but we have any upset customers, none of us are going anywhere," Merovitch said. "We tie any result back to customer service."

And because the housing market can sometimes be a roller coaster, the production builder makes it a point to keep things lively even during slow times, just on a smaller scale.

Typical events range from Football Fridays, where employees wear their favorite teams' jerseys and snack on football food, to Flip-Flop Friday, an annual summer event where employees wear shorts and flip-flops to work and participate in a contest to see who can flip their flops most accurately into a bucket.

Donna Newcomb said that as Chesmar's marketing director, she spends at least half her time planning company events.

"We are not hugely staffed, so we wear lots of hats and work hard," she said. "To balance that out, we play."

Chesmar, which has 68 employees in Houston, was ranked No. 3 by WorkplaceDynamics on the local Top Workplaces list among small companies.

While the annual trip is the most high-profile employee incentive, Chesmar also treats employees to an annual summer family event such as a Sugar Land Skeeters game, a Houston Astros game, a picnic or a swimming party as well as quarterly trips that might include go-kart racing or listening to a motivational speaker.

Merovitch believes these gestures go a long way in keeping employees engaged, which in turn leads to a better product.